Energy market analysis Feb. 5, 2026

The AI factor behind Trump’s power play with China’s oil suppliers

By James Gorrie via The Epoch Times

“AI dominance won’t be decided by who writes the best code. It will be decided by who can feed the most machines, the longest, at the lowest cost.” – James Gorrie, Epoch Times

Why is it so important for the Trump administration to gain control of Venezuela and encourage the Iranian people to overthrow the Islamic regime?

The link between the two is, of course, oil.

Of course the strategy in Venezuela revolves around oil, but it is also about limiting China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, undermining the BRICS currency, and cracking down on Venezuelan drug trafficking, illegal immigration and other woes.

The same is true for Iran in terms of oil. Both are important energy suppliers to China, but Iran in particular.

But this is not the whole picture. President Donald Trump’s broader strategy is aimed at limiting China’s access to cheap, reliable oil at precisely the time it needs that energy to compete with the United States in artificial intelligence (AI).

Venezuela was a golden deal – for China

Looking back, Venezuela was an incredibly good deal for China. Sanctioned by the United States and shunned by much of the West, Caracas sold heavily discounted crude to Chinese refiners willing to accept risk. It was not glamorous oil-but it was reliable and cheap. Venezuela supplied about five percent of China’s annual oil needs; not a huge figure, but enough to matter.

Trump’s decision to block Venezuelan oil exports and take control of the country’s oil infrastructure effectively ends that dream deal. With U.S. control, China loses a meaningful portion of its supply, about four percent, which helped act as a buffer against global price fluctuations.

This is more important than it sounds.

As the world’s largest oil importer, even minor disruptions force Beijing to rush to alternatives – often at higher prices, longer transportation distances, or higher political costs.

Iran: the greater means of pressure

But the Venezuelan oil flow to China is small beer compared to Iran’s.

China is Iran’s largest oil customer, buying the vast majority of Tehran’s exported crude, up to 80 percent, often at steep discounts, and is the lifeblood of China’s independent refineries, petrochemical sector and energy-hungry industrial base. In other words, Iranian oil is crucial to China’s continued economic and technological growth.

That fact puts Trump’s renewed pressure on the ruling Islamic regime in Iran in a different light. The tariffs, sanctions enforcement, secondary punishments and encouragement of rebellion by the Iranian people is more than just punishment for Tehran. It puts China in an energy split.

Should Beijing continue to buy Iranian oil and risk broader economic retaliation, or give in and lose one of the cheapest sources of energy available?

Either way, Beijing is paying more for less reliable oil supplies.

Why oil still matters in the AI era

There is a popular myth that AI runs on “clean” digital infrastructure – clouds, algorithms and software. In reality, AI runs on electricity, and electricity is still largely generated by nuclear power and fossil fuels, or oil, natural gas and coal. Training large AI models requires staggering amounts of energy, and a single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as a medium-sized city. Multiply that by hundreds of facilities, and energy – not chips – becomes the real bottleneck in the AI race.

Beijing understands this. That’s why it continues to approve a record number of new coal plants, expand gas infrastructure, and secure long-term oil contracts – even as it leads the world in renewable energy.

Moreover, China knows that oil and gas help stabilize power grids that support data centers. Intermittent renewable sources alone cannot guarantee the always-on power that AI systems require. Moreover, AI hardware depends on petroleum-based products – plastics, resins, coolants, lubricants and advanced composites used in chips, servers and cooling systems. Oil is a non-negotiable industrial commodity.

Finally, oil is relatively cheap, which lowers the cost of training models. And that stacks up quickly, as whichever nation can train more models faster and cheaper takes the lead in the AI race.

China cutting off discounted oil not only raises fuel prices, it raises the cost of intelligence itself.

Energy as a hidden AI weapon

This is where Trump’s strategy becomes clearer.

The United States does not need to outdo China in building data centers if it can beat them on price and power. America has abundant domestic oil and gas, growing LNG exports and deep capital markets to finance new, energy-hungry infrastructure.

China, on the other hand, is vulnerable. It imports more than 70 percent of its oil. Much of that comes from politically unstable or sanctioned states. Disrupt those flows, and China’s AI ambitions become more expensive, more vulnerable and more dependent on geopolitical goodwill.

In this sense, oil becomes a second-order AI weapon: it does not attack technology directly, but silently determines who can afford to scale up.

What this means for global balance

Yes, Russia still matters in this equation – but more as a background variable than as the main act. Lower oil prices and tighter markets could put pressure on Moscow’s revenues and make war financing more difficult. China’s increased reliance on Russian crude also deepens a partnership that poses long-term risks for Beijing.

But the real target of Trump’s energy denial strategy is not Russia. It’s China’s momentum.

Trump’s energy foreign policy is aimed at slowing China’s rise without firing a shot-forcing it to spend more, plan more prudently and accept structural disadvantages in the most important technological competition of the century.

The bigger picture

AI dominance won’t be decided by who writes the best code. It is determined by who can feed the most machines, the longest, at the lowest cost.

By squeezing Venezuela, pressuring Iran and reforming global oil flows, Trump is betting that energy strategy – not algorithms – will determine the winner in the AI-driven economy.

And if that bet is correct, the future of AI may not be determined in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen, but in oil fields, shipping lanes and sanctions where most people do not pay attention.

Price Crude oil – Brent April 2026 ($/barrel) – day cloud candle, log scale

Largest US energy project approved for West Texas amid gas plant and data center expansion

Authored by Dylan Baddour via Inside Climate News (emphasis ours),

“Massive fossil fuel infrastructure is being developed, often directly at the source of gas supply, in order to feed speculative AI demand.” – Jenny Martos, GEM’s Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker

The Texas environmental regulator this week issued the country’s largest air pollution permit for a massive planned complex of gas power plants and data centers near the Permian Basin oil fields, according to an announcement by the project developers.

Pacifico Energy, a global investor-owned infrastructure company, called its 7.65 gigawatt GW Ranch in Pecos County “the largest energy project in the United States” in a press release this week.

It is one of a handful of similarly colossal projects announced in 2025 that have made Texas the global epicenter of gas plant expansion, according to data released Thursday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

“Massive fossil fuel infrastructure is being developed, often directly at the source of gas supply, in order to feed speculative AI demand,” said Jenny Martos, project manager for GEM’s Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker.

Developer Fermi America applied for air permits in August for 6 GW of gas power to supply data centers at its planned complex near Amarillo. In November, Chevron announced plans to build its first-ever power plant, which would produce up to 5 GW of power for artificial intelligence in West Texas.

These are enormous volumes of energy, enough to power mid-sized cities. During 2025, the pipeline of gas power projects in development in Texas grew by nearly 58 GW of generation capacity, according to the GEM report, more than the peak power demand of the state of California.

Only China, with 50 times its population and 15 times its land area, has more gas power projects under development than Texas, the GEM report said. Nearly half of all upcoming gas power projects in Texas, totaling 40 GW of capacity, are planned to power data centers directly, the report said.

“There is just an explosion of these things,” said Griffin Bird, a research analyst who tracks gas plants for the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, D.C. “We’re having such a tough time staying on top of new projects.”

The planned hyperscale facilities of north and west Texas, if fully built out, could be among the largest sources of emissions in both the country and the world, Bird said.

Pacifico’s GW Ranch in Pecos County is authorized to release more than 12,000 tons per year of regulated air pollutants, according to permit documents from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, including soot, ammonia, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.

The complex is also allowed to emit up to 33 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, according to permit documents, representing nearly five percent of Canada’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Gas plants planned at Fermi America’s Project Matador would release up to 24 million tons per year of greenhouse gas.

“I’d be hard-pressed to think of a bigger emitter,” Bird said.

Many gas-powered data center projects with up to 500 MW of capacity – enough to power more than 200,000 homes – have received permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality within a month, Bird said.

For example, Misae Gas Power applied for permits on Dec. 23 to install 206 gas generators with a total capacity of 519 MW at a data center outside San Antonio. TCEQ granted the permit on Jan. 14, authorizing emissions including 133 tons per year of toxic particulate matter and 10 tons per year of carcinogenic formaldehyde.

The TCEQ did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent Wednesday evening.

In the small town of Blue, about 80 kilometers east of Austin, the TCEQ issued a permit in October for the 1.2 GW Sandow Lakes Power Plant, located near North America’s largest Bitcoin mining facility.

Neighbors in the rural community organized a group called Move the Gas Plant and formally requested a hearing from the TCEQ on the air pollution permit that would allow 460 tons per year of ammonia emissions, 153 tons of soot, 76 tons of sulfuric acid and 18 tons of other “hazardous air pollutants” – substances known or suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive problems or other serious health problems. The TCEQ denied their request and granted the permits at a public meeting in October.Move the Gas Plant

“It took them literally 45 seconds to bring it up and deny our request for a hearing,” said Travis Brown, spokesman for Move the Gas Plant and a retired state Department of Agriculture employee. “There was essentially zero discussion.”

Soon after, Sandow began construction on the site, about six miles from the home where Brown and his wife feed deer and other wildlife in the forests of rural Lee County.

“They’re going gung-ho out there,” he said. “They’ve cleared that site and bulldozed trees, installed housing for workers and power lines.”

Texas currently has 11 gas power plant projects under construction, according to GEM data. It has 102 projects in preparation – acquiring land, permits and contracts. Another 28 projects have been announced.

If all those plants are built, it would more than double Texas’ current gas energy production capacity.

Pacifico’s GW Ranch, at full capacity of 7.65 GW, could consume between 1 and 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day, according to calculations by Gabriel Collins, a researcher at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. That is equivalent to 4 to 7 percent of the gas produced in 2025 from the Permian Basin, one of the world’s most productive shale fields.

“Even for something like the Permian, that’s a very material chunk,” said Collins, a native of Midland.

Not every super project announced in Texas will be built, he said. Some have slick public relations operations that exaggerate their technical and financial capabilities, he said.

Even the ones that do get built do not come online all at once, but slowly, 100 MW at a time, over several years. They may never reach full capacity.

Still, he said, the gas-powered data center projects announced last year in Texas and elsewhere include amounts of energy that are hard to fathom and rarely discussed just a few years ago.

“It’s important to help people keep a sense of perspective on these,” Collins said. “Even if they built just a small fraction of what that permit says, it’d still be a tremendous facility.”

Price Baseload Electricity supply year 2026 (eur/MWh) – week cloud candle, log scale

EU faces tough choices after LNG ‘wake-up call’

“It was the Greenland affair that played the role of the alarm clock that woke Brussels and national capitals up.“ – Irina Slav, OilPrice.com

• Europe is growing increasingly worried about its heavy reliance on U.S. LNG, with EU officials warning that energy security risks are shifting rather than disappearing.
• Diversification options are limited: sanctions on Russian gas and strict EU methane rules effectively exclude major suppliers such as Russia, Qatar and much of U.S. LNG.
• Gas costs and policy contradictions rise as Europe pushes for diversification but remains locked into record U.S. LNG imports

The European Union needs to diversify its natural gas sources, Brussels’ energy commissioner said this week, expressing growing unease in European capitals that the EU has become too dependent on liquefied natural gas from the United States. But succeeding in that diversification effort will be difficult because of the bloc’s emissions-focused energy policies – and sanctions against Russia.

“We are speaking to countries around the world that are able to deliver LNG to us,” Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen told media in Brussels this week, as quoted by Bloomberg.

“I definitely hear this when speaking to energy ministers and heads of state from all over Europe that there is a growing concern.”

The situation represents an interesting reversal of sentiment from just four years ago. In 2022, the European Union declared that it would switch from Russian pipeline gas as punishment for the invasion of eastern Ukraine and start buying American liquefied gas instead. EU officials praised the decision as a major step toward energy independence and lauded American LNG producers – and the U.S. federal government – as a reliable business partner and energy supplier.

Now the European Union is the largest regional buyer of U.S. liquefied gas, which seems to have been the plan from the beginning-but that gas comes at a high cost, and with the federal government very different than it was four years ago, the image of the reliable business partner and energy supplier has changed quite radically.

It was the Greenland affair that played the role of the alarm clock that woke up Brussels and national capitals. Until that moment, European leaders had apparently assumed that Trump would continue to do business with their countries – and the EU – as Biden did before him, namely by continuing the security guarantees and preferential trade arrangements that had been the hallmark of transatlantic relations for decades. Only Trump didn’t feel up to that. Trump showed early on that he came to cash in – higher NATO spending, import tariffs, and eventually Greenland.

However, the myth of friendly American LNG that could replace all Russian gas and guarantee energy security for a continent was punctured even before Greenland, by Trump’s chief energy man. Secretary Chris Wright stated unequivocally that U.S. liquefied gas producers have no intention of complying with the new EU methane regulation. The regulation requires constant monitoring, tracking and reporting of methane leaks along the LNG supply chain-and U.S. LNG producers are not investing in that. For that matter, neither is QatarEnergy.

Speaking to reporters, Commissioner Jorgensen said European gas buyers were looking at Qatar, Canada and Algeria as potential avenues for diversifying gas supplies. But Qatar has made it as clear as the U.S. that it will not do methane tracking and reporting. And it has done so repeatedly. And with the world’s two largest LNG exporters outside the methane reporting experiment, the EU really has few options-especially now that the Brussels summit has approved the total ban on all Russian gas imports, starting next year. Of course, it is still January 2026, and much may change in the next 12 months, with some EU observers claiming it will soon change its tune on Russian gas. Until this argument finds factual support, however, the EU is off Russian gas-and unless it drops methane regulation, it is also off Qatari and most U.S. gas. As an alternative, American gas will simply become even more expensive, raising the question of how long the EU can afford it.

The bigger question is what are the realistic alternatives to American LNG? The answer, unfortunately, is unpleasant. There is no big enough LNG supplier to step in and take the place of the United States, not economically at least. This means that gas buyers in Europe will from now on scour the world for LNG in an attempt to advance the new diversification vision of the Brussels political establishment.

Meanwhile, however, there is that trade deal that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed with President Trump last year that calls for $250 billion in U.S. energy imports to the EU each year until 2027. One could dispute whether Trump knew that the EU could not physically buy that much American energy, but wanted them to buy more oil and LNG – which he got, by the way. European Union imports of American LNG reached a record high last year, although the price was nowhere near $250 billion.

Trump probably knew the Europeans couldn’t buy $250 billion worth of oil and LNG. But if the Europeans get really serious about that diversification, the Greenland deal could possibly be canceled in favor of another, more immediate option. If anything, President Trump has repeatedly proven that he follows his own rules.

Price TTF gas supply year 2026 (eur/MWh) – week cloud candle, log scale

“Sleep Tight, America. We Got This”: NatGas And Coal Power Plants Prevented Grid Collapse During Historic Winter Blast

Submitted by James Bevan, president of Criterion Research

“Affordable Power. Grid Reliability. All from American Coal .” – message on X from West Virginia Coal Association

The arctic cold of Winter Storm Fern from Jan. 21-26 provided clear data on generation patterns during extreme cold spells. The storm stressed multiple U.S. power grids, such as PJM and ERCOT, and showed the operational characteristics of different generation types under peak winter demand conditions.

As the cold set in – Criterion’s pipeline data showed huge increases in deliveries to gas-fired power plants. That included dozens of active power plants breaking records, along with a huge amount of peaking capacity coming online to keep the grid stable.

Gas and coal capture peak demand

During peak periods in PJM – the country’s largest grid operator – thermal and nuclear generation dominated. When cold conditions arrived, natural gas provided 43% of generation and coal contributed 23%, while wind and solar together dropped to 3-4% of the total energy mix.

PJM wind levels fell to monthly lows over the weekend as load intensified, sinking to just 2,142 MW on Saturday while gas combustion rose to 55,655 MW (a seasonal record).

Solar is already a limited part of the PJM fuel mix, and Saturday’s output of 2,372 MW had limited impact compared to thermal, and solar fell even further yesterday, with an output of only 442 MW.

In ERCOT, the grid maintained operating reserves above 11,000 MW throughout the event. The thousands of natural gas facilities that underwent weatherization programs and inspection protocols following Winter Storm Uri performed as designed, with minimal forced outages reported.

To deliver peak demand, ERCOT thermal assets reached record levels. That includes live readings of natural gas combustion that rose to new five-year records in the morning – up to 48,477 MW at one point.

ERCOT coal combustion also increased, to nearly 10,400 MW early in the morning when peak load levels were reached.

ERCOT wind and solar underperformed and fell well below levels seen earlier this month.

Implications for the future

The grid maintained an adequate supply-demand balance during this event due to existing thermal generation capacity. However, with data center demand growth adding demand equivalent to large metropolitan areas and accelerating thermal retirement, winter reserve margins are under increasing pressure in several regions.

The event underscores the need for incremental natural gas generation construction. With coal retirement reducing fuel-secure capacity and intermittent sources making limited contributions during winter peaks, new gas-fired capacity will be essential to maintain reliability. Current interconnection queues show significant gas generation projects, but lead times for permits and construction suggest a multi-year timeline to address emerging capacity shortages in key regions.

Price ICE Coal delivery year 2026 (usd/t) – week cloud candle, log scale

EU’s green tightening threatens European industry amid de-industrialization

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

“High ideological fortresses have been erected, completely obscuring the view of economic reality.” – Thomas Kolbe

Brussels and Berlin are increasing regulatory pressure on European industry. With the tightening of the EU Industrial Emissions Directive, agriculture is now even more in the crosshairs of climate regulation. That the EU is increasingly isolating itself on the international stage does not seem to bother anyone.

If this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos had one clear message, it was this:the U.S. delegation led by President Donald Trump gave Europe’s climate-socialist economic transformation a red card. In no uncertain terms, the U.S. president made it clear that the European path-the regulatory attempt at a net-zero economy with zero carbon emissions-in American eyes has already failed, and they have hit the brakes.

As the German cabinet transposes the EU-mandated tightening of the Industrial Emissions Directive into national law, extended to farms after parliamentary approval (Apollo News reported), the impression is solidifying: the politically induced crisis of European industry-the slow de-industrialization of Europe’s major industrial centers-is still treated in the economic models of the political leadership as a minor problem, collateral damage on the way to the green utopia.

Artificial state demand is now used to try to refill vacated industrial capacities – either through military production or subsidized eco-projects, which fail under cost pressures or are simply not applied for.

Regulatory pressure with intent

Specifically, the new EU directive will place about 30 percent of poultry and pig farms under industrial-emissions regulation. As if the industry was not already on the verge of collapse under existing regulatory pressure, the next attack on these farms is now being orchestrated.

Across the EU, about 50,000 companies will be required to implement binding environmental management systems, monitored in cycles of one to three years. In Germany alone, 13,000 facilities are covered by EU compliance. Farms with at least 1,200 fattening pigs or 700 breeding sows, as well as poultry farms with about 40,000 broilers or 21,400 laying hens, will now be direct targets of the tightened rules.

Under the threat of heavy fines of at least three percent of annual turnover generated in the EU for violations, the European Union is trying to enforce the Green Deal with brute force. The goal is to ensure the reduction of harmful emissions in air, water and soil, while promoting resource efficiency and a carbon-free circular economy by 2050.

For German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD), the tightening of the directive is cause for rejoicing. He cited the policy’s successes over the past decade, which have already led to significant carbon reductions and promoted greener production in Europe. The fact that technological progress comes mainly from competition and market-driven dynamics hardly counts in today’s political central planning.

Tall ideological fortresses have been erected, completely obscuring the view of economic reality.

For affected companies, implementation means one thing above all: a massive increase in documentation, approval and compliance obligations. They will now be subject to regular emissions measurements and detailed reporting, submitted to state environmental authorities and fed into EU-wide registries and public portals – suddenly transparency matters. This transparency requirement creates intense public pressure on companies to comply quickly and fully, regardless of how the additional costs are financed.

Industry experts estimate compliance costs – for example, for ammonia emission reductions – between €100,000 and €500,000 per barn, depending on size and technology. If BAT (“Best Available Techniques”) requirements must be updated annually, these burdens can quickly add up to millions.

Previously, the EU directive applied mainly to sectors such as chemicals, steel, cement, refineries and energy facilities, mainly targeting large plants with high emissions and throughput. Government officials repeatedly emphasize that the tightened regulatory pressure applies only to large companies. In reality, both the Supply Chain Act and the new directive create significant pressure along entire supply chains. Large companies are forced to pass on their environmental obligations to smaller suppliers, extending inspection and compliance mechanisms along the entire value chain.

Political paralysis

Remarkably, European politics remains unmoved by the ongoing deindustrialization of its economic base, stubbornly defending its course. As its industrial base erodes, so does its geopolitical influence. Any industrial company that succumbs to regulatory pressure and rising energy costs and relocates takes valuable know-how with it. Value chains destabilize, high factor incomes disappear, and the state faces growing fiscal pressure.

The response to this visible disaster – which led to some 24,000 business failures last year – remains predictable: a transparent media performance by government officials. The Chancellor’s well-intentioned calls for bureaucracy reduction are repeated with increasing emphasis, not least in view of five upcoming state elections this year. Bureaucracy reduction has become a standard political phrase with no real consequences.

The underlying strategy becomes clear: publicly, the government is positioning itself as a problem solver, buying time while steadfastly pursuing the stated goal of green transformation.

German policymakers could easily reverse this destructive course. Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU, and key positions of power are held by Christian Democrats in Berlin, Brussels and the European Parliament.

The only way out of this self-imposed trap would be a return to a fully deregulated free-market economy – combined with a political rapprochement to Russian energy flows. Yet the spirit of central planning and supposed industrial control continues to dominate.

Ever-increasing bureaucracy

Growing regulation inevitably requires an expanding administrative apparatus. Over the past five years, public sector employment has increased by about two percent a year-roughly 100,000 additional positions. Against this backdrop, the Chancellor’s repeated calls for bureaucracy reduction appear as a mediatactic farce.

Documentation, proof and audit obligations in German industry have reached Kafkaesque proportions. In the past three years alone, some 325,000 additional positions had to be created in companies to handle the growing administrative burden from Brussels and Berlin. In effect, the state is outsourcing its own bureaucracy to the private sector.

These political decisions put tangible pressure on companies. Berlin and Brussels are responding to international competition and U.S. deregulation with policies that intensify existing industrial challenges rather than solve them.

Price Emission Rights – Dec-26 contract EEX (eur/t) – day cloud candle, log scale

Scientists pioneer inverted solar panels for energy at night

By Haley Zaremba of OilPrice

“If you were to look at the Earth at night, what you’d see with an infrared camera is the Earth glowing.” – Professor Ned Ekins-Daukes

• Scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) are developing a “reverse solar” panel, called a thermoradiative diode, that generates electricity by emitting infrared light (heat) into cold environments.
• The device works by capturing heat that the earth absorbs during the day and radiating it at night, providing a way to generate power when traditional solar panels are inactive.
• Although it currently produces a small amount of power, the long-term goal for this technology is to power small devices at night or even provide power to satellites as they pass through the dark side of their orbit.

At the global level, solar power has grown exponentially in recent decades as costs have fallen and demand has increased accordingly. The world is estimated to have added one-third more solar capacity by 2025 than by 2024, marking a remarkable amount of added capacity. But while renewable energy is proving too cheap to fail, there are some notable drawbacks to the rapid addition of these resources – notably the insufficient co-addition of supporting grid and transmission infrastructure and the variability of solar and wind power, both of which pose significant threats to global energy security.

Unlike fossil fuels, whose production levels can be manipulated at will to meet demand, solar and wind energy depend on natural variables beyond human control. The production rate of solar panels depends on day length and the quality of sunlight, and the most productive hours are often at odds with demand peaks.

A photo taken with an infrared camera by scientists at the University of New South Wales shows the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge radiating heat at night.

But a team of scientists in Australia is working on a way to solve that problem by developing a new type of solar panel that could work at night. It is a kind of inverted solar panel, which works by emitting light instead of absorbing it. Instead of using photovoltaic cells to capture sunlight, this device uses a semiconductor called a thermoradiative diode that can convert heat into energy. The heat used by these devices is solar energy, but captured via the heat that the earth absorbs during sunny hours, which is then released as infrared energy even long after the sun has set.

“If you were to look at the Earth at night, what you’d see with an infrared camera is the Earth glowing,” says Professor Ned Ekins-Daukes, who leads the research team developing these thermoradiative ‘solar panels’ at Sydney’s University of New South Wales (UNSW). “What’s happening is the Earth is radiating heat out into the cold universe,” he adds. His team wants to capture that heat and convert it into a usable and reliable energy source.

In more scientific terms, “Solar cells generate an electric current by absorbing photons from a hotter object (i.e. the Sun), whereas thermoradiative diodes generate a current by emitting photons of infrared light into colder surroundings,” explains a companion article by Nature Portfolio. “As long as thermoradiative diodes are warmer than their surroundings, they will emit infrared radiation and generate electricity.”

The research team at UNSW is building on previous research and modeling of thermoradiative diodes developed at Harvard and Stanford universities in the United States. The UNSW team took this base and ran with it, and was the first to successfully use one of the devices to “demonstrate direct electrical power” in 2022.

The research has since advanced, but it is still far from competitive with conventional solar power. “So far, the device can generate only a very small amount of electricity – around 100,000 times less than that of a conventional solar panel,” CNN reports.

In the not-too-distant future, these diodes could power small devices overnight, functionally replacing batteries or serving to charge them.

“Many people leave their WiFi on overnight and charge their phones,” says Ekins-Daukes. “There’s a light electrical load at night, which thermoradiative diodes could help supply in the future.”

But someday these thermoradiative diode semiconductors could have a much grander application, powering satellites circling the Earth. These satellites switch between light and darkness in relatively rapid cycles – about every 45 minutes – and attaching thermoradiative diodes could help power these devices when they are out of reach of sunlight and in the extremely cold temperatures of space.